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Odelay

Release Date: 6/18/1996

Recording Date: 6/1996

Tracks: 13

Length: 00:51:28 Hrs

Label: DGC

Type: CD,CS,DI,LP

Genre/Styles:
Alternative Pop/Rock, Vocals, United States of America, Lo-Fi, Indie Rock, Dance-Rock

Album Tracks (13)

Song Title
Length
1.
Devils Haircut
03:13
2.
Hotwax
03:52
3.
Lord Only Knows
04:14
4.
The New Pollution
03:39
5.
Derelict
04:11
6.
Novacane
04:38
7.
Jack-Ass
04:00
8.
Where It's At
05:25
9.
Minus
02:32
10.
Sissyneck
04:02
11.
Readymade
02:43
12.
High 5 (Rock the Catskills)
04:10
13.
Ramshackle
04:49

What the Critics Say

Unlike Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, the indie albums that followed his debut Mellow Gold by a mere matter of months, Odelay was a full-fledged, full-bodied album, released on a major label in the summer of 1996 and bearing an intricate, meticulous production by the Dust Brothers in their first gig since the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. Odelay shared a similar collage structure to that 1989 masterpiece, relying on a blend of found sounds and samples, but instead of lending the album its primary colors, the Dust Brothers provided the accents, highlighting Beck's ever-changing sounds, tying together his stylistic shifts, making the leaps from the dirge-blues of "Jack-Ass" to the hazy party rock of "Where's It's At" seem not so great. Like Mellow Gold, Odelay winds up touching on a number of disparate strands -- folk and country, grungy garage rock, stiff-boned electro, louche exotica, old-school rap, touches of noise rock -- but there's no break-neck snap between sensibilities, everything flows smoothly, the dense sounds suggesting that the songs are a bit more complicated than they actually are. Most of the songs here betray Beck's roots as an anti-folk singer -- he reworks blues structures ("Devil's Haircut"), country ("Lord Only Knows," "Sissyneck"), soul ("Hotwax"), folk ("Ramshackle") and rap ("High 5 [Rock the Catskills]," "Where It's At") -- but each track twists conventions, either in their construction or presentation, giving this a vibrant, electric pulse, surprising in its form and attack. Like a mosaic, all the details add up to a picture greater than its parts, so while some of Beck's best songs are here, Odelay is best appreciated as a recorded whole, with each layered sample enhancing the allusion that came before. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

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